Panama Canal open to traffic - Aug 15, 1914 - HISTORY.com Panama Canal open to traffic Share this: Panama Canal open to traffic Author Panama Canal open to traffic URL Publisher A+E Networks The American-built waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is inaugurated with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship. The rush of settlers to California and Oregon in the mid 19th century was the initial impetus of the U.S. desire to build an artificial waterway across Central America. In 1855, the United States completed a railroad across the Isthmus of Panama (then part of Colombia), prompting various parties to propose canal-building plans. Ultimately, Colombia awarded rights to build the canal to Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French entrepreneur who had completed the Suez Canal in 1869. Construction on a sea-level canal began in 1881, but inadequate planning, disease among the workers, and financial problems drove Lesseps’ company into bankruptcy in 1889.

Three years later, Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, a former chief engineer of the canal works and a French citizen, acquired the assets of the defunct French company. By the turn of the century, sole possession of the isthmian canal became imperative to the United States, which had acquired an overseas empire at the end of the Spanish-American War and sought the ability to move warships and commerce quickly between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In 1902, the U.S. Congress authorized purchase of the French canal company (pending a treaty with Colombia), and allocated funding for the canal’s construction. In 1903, the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty was signed with Columbia, granting the U.S. use of the territory in exchange for financial compensation. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty, but the Colombian Senate, fearing a loss of sovereignty, refused. In response, President Theodore Roosevelt gave tacit approval to a Panamanian independence movement, which was engineered in large part by Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla and his canal company. On November 3, 1903, a faction of Panamanians issued a declaration of independence from Colombia.

The U.S.-administered railroad removed its trains from the northern terminus of Colón, thus stranding Colombian troops sent to crush the rebellion. Other Colombian forces were discouraged from marching on Panama by the arrival of U.S. warship Nashville. On November 6, the United States recognized the Republic of Panama, and on November 18 the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed with Panama, granting the U.S. exclusive and permanent possession of the Panama Canal Zone. In exchange, Panama received $10 million and an annuity of $250,000 beginning nine years later. The treaty was negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and Bunau-Varilla, who had been given plenipotentiary powers to negotiate on behalf of Panama. Almost immediately, the treaty was condemned by many Panamanians as an infringement on their country’s new national sovereignty. In 1906, American engineers decided on the construction of a lock canal, and the next three years were spent developing construction facilities and eradicating tropical diseases in the area. In 1909, construction proper began. In one of the largest construction projects of all time, U.S.

engineers moved nearly 240 million cubic yards of earth and spent close to $400 million in constructing the 40-mile-long canal (or 51 miles long, if the deepened seabed on both ends of the canal is taken into account). On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal was opened to traffic. Panama later pushed to revoke the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, and in 1977 U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos signed a treaty to turn over the canal to Panama by the end of the century. A peaceful transfer occurred at noon on December 31, 1999. Related Videos 7 Fascinating Facts About the Panama Canal - History in the Headlines 7 Fascinating Facts About the Panama Canal August 15, 2014 By Elizabeth Nix Share Hailed as one of the great achievements of the 20th Century, the Panama Canal connects 160 countries and 1,700 ports around the world.

Share this: 7 Fascinating Facts About the Panama Canal Author 7 Fascinating Facts About the Panama Canal URL Google August 15, 1914, marks the 100th anniversary of the official opening of the Panama Canal, the American-built waterway across the Isthmus of Panama that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The 50-mile-long passage created an important shortcut for ships; after the canal was constructed, a vessel sailing between New York and California was able to bypass the long journey around the tip of South America and trim nearly 8,000 miles from its voyage. The canal, which uses a system of locks to lift ships 85 feet above sea level, was the largest engineering project of its time. Find out more fascinating facts about this iconic waterway, including why thousands of workers died during its construction and how it’s now being modernized. The idea for a canal across Panama dates back to the 16th century. In 1513, Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa became the first European to discover that the Isthmus of Panama was just a slim land bridge separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Balboa’s discovery sparked a search for a natural waterway linking the two oceans. In 1534, after no such passage across the isthmus had been found, Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, ordered a survey to determine if one could be built, but the surveyors eventually decided that construction of a ship canal was impossible. The men behind the Suez Canal and Eiffel Tower were convicted in connection with failed effort to build a canal. In the ensuing centuries, various nations considered developing a Panamanian canal but a serious attempt wasn’t made until the 1880s. In 1881, a French company headed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, a former diplomat who developed Egypt’s Suez Canal, began digging a canal across Panama. The project was plagued by poor planning, engineering problems and tropical diseases that killed thousands of workers. De Lesseps intended to build the canal at sea level, without locks, like the Suez Canal, but the excavation process proved far more difficult than anticipated.

Gustave Eiffel, who designed the famous tower in Paris that bears his name, was then hired to create locks for the canal; however, the De Lesseps-led company went bankrupt in 1889. At the time, the French had sunk more than $260 million into the canal venture and excavated more than 70 million cubic yards of earth. The canal venture’s collapse caused a major scandal in France. De Lesseps and his son Charles, along with Eiffel and several other company executives, were indicted on fraud and mismanagement charges. In 1893, the men were found guilty, sentenced to prison and fined, although the sentences were overturned. After the scandal, Eiffel retired from business and devoted himself to scientific research; Ferdinand de Lesseps died in 1894. That same year, a new French company was formed to take over the assets of the bankrupt business and continue the canal; however, this second firm soon abandoned the endeavor as well. America originally wanted to build a canal in Nicaragua, not Panama.

Throughout the 1800s, the United States, which wanted a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific for economic and military reasons, considered Nicaragua a more feasible location than Panama. However, that view shifted thanks in part to the efforts of Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, a French engineer who had been involved in both of France’s canal projects. In the late 1890s Bunau-Varilla began lobbying American lawmakers to buy the French canal assets in Panama, and eventually convinced a number of them that Nicaragua had dangerous volcanoes, making Panama the safer choice. In 1902, Congress authorized the purchase of the French assets. However, the following year, when Colombia, which Panama was then a part of, refused to ratify an agreement allowing the United States to build a canal, the Panamanians, with encouragement from Bunau-Varilla and tacit approval from President Theodore Roosevelt, revolted against Colombia and declared Panama’s independence. Soon afterward, U.S.

Secretary of State John Hay, and Bunau-Varilla, acting as a representative of Panama’s provisional government, negotiated the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which gave America the right to a zone of more than 500 square miles in which it could construct a canal; the Canal Zone was to be controlled in perpetuity by the Americans. All told, the United States would shell out some $375 million to build the canal, which included a $10 million payment to Panama as a condition of the 1903 treaty, and $40 million to buy the French assets. A century after the United States completed the Panama Canal, a navigable link across Nicaragua remains a possibility: In 2013, a Chinese company announced it had struck a $40 billion deal with the Nicaraguan government for the rights to construct such a waterway. More than 25,000 workers died during the canal’s construction. The canal builders had to contend with a variety of obstacles, including challenging terrain, hot, humid weather, heavy rainfall and rampant tropical diseases.

The earlier French attempts had led to the deaths of more than 20,000 workers and America’s efforts fared little better; between 1904 and 1913 some 5,600 workers died due to disease or accidents. Many of these earlier deaths had been caused by yellow fever and malaria; diseases that the medical community at the time believed were caused by bad air and dirty conditions. By the early 20th century, however, medical experts better understood the role of mosquitoes as carriers for these diseases, allowing them to significantly reduce the number of deaths among canal workers, thanks to a host of sanitation measures that included draining areas with standing water, removing possible insect breeding grounds and installing window screens in buildings. Between 13,000 and 14,000 ships use the canal every year. American ships use the canal the most, followed by those from China, Chile, Japan, Colombia and South Korea. Every vessel that transits the canal must pay a toll based on its size and cargo volume. Tolls for the largest ships can run about $450,000.

The smallest toll ever paid was 36 cents, plunked down in 1928 by American adventurer Richard Halliburton, who swam the canal. Today, some $1.8 billion in tolls are collected annually. On average, it takes a ship 8 to 10 hours to pass through the canal. While moving through it, a system of locks raises each ship 85 feet above sea level. Ship captains aren’t allowed to transit the canal on their own; instead, a specially trained canal pilot takes navigational control of each vessel to guide it through the waterway. In 2010, the 1 millionth vessel crossed the canal since it first opened in 1914. The United States transferred control of the canal to Panama in 1999. In the years after the canal opened, tensions increased between America and Panama over control of the canal and the surrounding Canal Zone. In 1964, Panamanians rioted after being prevented from flying their nation’s flag next to a U.S. flag in the Canal Zone. In the aftermath of the violence, Panama temporarily broke off diplomatic relations with the United States.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos of Panama signed treaties that transferred control of the canal to Panama in 1999 but gave the United States the right to use military force to defend the waterway against any threat to its neutrality. Despite opposition by a number of politicians who didn’t want their country to give up its authority over the canal, the U.S. Senate ratified the Torrijos-Carter Treaties by a narrow margin in 1978. Control of the canal was transferred peacefully to Panama in December 1999, and the Panamanians have been responsible for it ever since. The canal is being expanded to handle today’s megaships. In 2007, work began on a $5.25 billion expansion project that will enable the canal to handle post-Panamax ships; that is, those exceeding the dimensions of so-called Panamax vessels, built to fit through the canal, whose locks are 110 feet wide and 1,000 feet long. The expanded canal will be able to handle cargo vessels carrying 14,000 20-foot containers, nearly three times the amount currently accommodated.

The expansion project, expected to be completed in late 2015, includes the creation of a new, larger set of locks and the widening and deepening of existing navigational channels. However, while the new locks will be able to fit many modern ships, they still won’t be super-sized enough for some vessels, such as Maersk’s Triple E class ships, the planet’s biggest container ships, which measure 194 feet wide and 1,312 feet long, with a capacity of 18,000 20-foot containers. Tags Milestones: 1899–1913 - Office of the Historian Milestones: 1899–1913 Building the Panama Canal, 1903–1914 President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the realization of a long-term United States goal—a trans-isthmian canal. Throughout the 1800s, American and British leaders and businessmen wanted to ship goods quickly and cheaply between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Roosevelt on a digging machine during construction of the Panama Canal, circa 1908.

(Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division) To that end, in 1850 the United States and Great Britain negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to reign in rivalry over a proposed canal through the Central American Republic of Nicaragua. The Anglo-American canal, however, never went beyond the planning stages. French attempts to build a canal through Panama (province of Colombia) advanced further. Led by Ferdinand de Lesseps—the builder of the Suez Canal in Egypt—the French began excavating in 1880. Malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical diseases conspired against the de Lesseps campaign and after 9 years and a loss of approximately 20,000 lives, the French attempt went bankrupt. In spite of such setbacks, American interest in a canal continued unabated. The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901 abrogated the earlier Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and licensed the United States to build and manage its own canal. Following heated debate over the location of the proposed canal, on June 19, 1902, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of building the canal through Panama.

Within 6 months, Secretary of State John Hay signed a treaty with Colombian Foreign Minister Tomás Herrán to build the new canal. The financial terms were unacceptable to Colombia’s congress, and it rejected the offer. President Roosevelt responded by dispatching U.S. warships to Panama City (on the Pacific) and Colón (on the Atlantic) in support of Panamanian independence. Colombian troops were unable to negotiate the jungles of the Darien Strait and Panama declared independence on November 3, 1903. The newly declared Republic of Panama immediately named Philippe Bunau-Varilla (a French engineer who had been involved in the earlier de Lesseps canal attempt) as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. In his new role, Bunau-Varilla negotiated the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903, which provided the United States with a 10-mile wide strip of land for the canal, a one-time $10 million payment to Panama, and an annual annuity of $250,000. The United States also agreed to guarantee the independence of Panama. Completed in 1914, the Panama Canal symbolized U.S.

technological prowess and economic power. Although U.S. control of the canal eventually became an irritant to U.S.-Panamanian relations, at the time it was heralded as a major foreign policy achievement. Timeline . Panama Canal . American Experience . WGBH | PBS Other Timelines Page 2 of 2 Forty five years after the U.S. first considered building a canal through Central America, the Panama Canal opened to the public. Thousands lost their lives in the effort to construct the canal, one of the most daring and innovative accomplishments of its time, and it remains integral to worldwide shipping today. 1910 Over 40 black churches are in existence throughout the canal zone. March 1910 Construction of breakwater at Limón Bay begins. End of 1910 Over a million cubic yards are added to the Gatún Dam each month as it slowly builds up in height and strength. National Archives The Gatun upper locks, mid-construction May 1911 Assembly of the locks at Gatún begins. This year, construction on the Gatún Dam will progress. The site will host more than 2,000 workers, unloading over 100 trainloads of spoil each day.

Fall 1911 The Pedro Miguel locks finish construction. By the end of this year, tourism starts in earnest, with more than 15,000 visitors coming to the canal. 1912 This year, landslides in Cucaracha deposit almost 3 million cubic yards of spoil into the Culebra Cut, all of which has to be laboriously dug out again over the course of four and a half months. September 1912: Construction Wraps Up Assembly of the locks at Miraflores begins. They will be completed within nine months. National Archives Two steam shovels meet in the middle of Culebra Cut May 20, 1913 Excavation at Culebra Cut is completed. June 27, 1913 The Gatún Dam is complete. The spillway gates are closed, and the new lake fills to its full height. August 13, 1913 The dike between the Miraflores Locks and the Pacific Ocean is blown up, bringing the water from the Pacific closer inland.

National Archives The Gatun Locks in action December 10, 1913 After a final push of excavation, an unbroken waterway connects the Atlantic to the Pacific. January 7, 1914 The French crane boat Alexandre La Valley completes the first passage through the Panama Canal. By the spring, tugs and boats will begin passing through the canal regularly, and by June, the Panama Canal will earn $7,000 in tolls. August 4, 1914 The Germans declare war, shifting media attention from the fanfare at Panama to Europe. August 15, 1914 The Panama Canal officially opens. The toll to cross is 90 cents per cargo ton. 1936 The Queen Mary becomes the first ship too big for the 1,050- by 110-foot locks. 1939 Annual traffic surpasses 7,000 ships. 1950s The Panama Canal is used widely for the transport of material and troops during the Korean War. 1966 Channel lighting is installed, allowing for transportation through the canal 24 hours a day.

1970s The Panama Canal is used extensively for the transport of material and troops during the Vietnam War. On average, over 15,000 ships a year use the canal. 1974 Tolls are raised for the first time from 90 cents to $1.08 per cargo ton. The following year, the passenger ship Queen Elizabeth II will pay a record toll of $42,077.88. 1999 The U.S. hands over sovereignty of the Panama Canal to Panama. 2007 The record for total annual tonnage transported through the canal is broken with over 312 million tons crossing. With 37% of ships worldwide now too large for the canal, Panama begins a project to improve the canal , constructing two new locks and widening of the passage. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2014. Panama Canal History - End of the Construction END OF THE CONSTRUCTION The first complete Panama Canal passage by a self-propelled, oceangoing vessel took place on January 7, 1914.

The Alexandre La Valley, an old French crane boat that had previously been brought from the Atlantic side now came through the Pacific locks. With the end of construction nearing, the Canal team began to disassemble and go on to other things. Thousands of workers were laid off, townsites were abandoned and moved with hundreds of buildings disassembled or demolished. Gorgas resigned from the Canal commission to help fight pneumonia among workers in the South African gold mines, following which he was made surgeon general of the Army. Effective April 1, 1914, the Isthmian Canal Commission ceased to exist and a new administrative entity, the Canal Zone Governor, was officially established. Colonel Goethals became the first Governor of the Panama Canal, unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Plans were made for a grand celebration to appropriately mark the official opening of the Panama Canal on August 15, 1914. A fleet of international warships was to assemble off Hampton Roads on New Years Day 1915, then sail to San Francisco through the Panama Canal, arriving in time for the opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a worlds-fair type celebration. But no such grand opening occurred.

Although the Panama Pacific Exposition went on as planned, World War I forced cancellation of planned festivities at the Canal. The grand opening was a modest affair with the Canal cement boat Ancon, piloted by Captain John A. Constantine, the Canals first pilot, making the first official transit. There were no international dignitaries in attendance. Observing the transit from shore, Goethals followed its progress by railroad. The Panama Canal cost Americans around $375,000,000, including the $10,000,000 paid to Panama and the $40,000,000 paid to the French company. It was the single most expensive construction project in United States history to that time. Fortifications cost extra, about $12,000,000. Amazingly, unlike any other such project on record, the American canal had cost less in dollars than estimated, with the final figure some $23,000,000 below the 1907 estimate, in spite of landslides and a design change to a wider canal.

Even more amazing is that this huge, complex and unprecedented project was carried out without any of the scandal or corruption that often plagues such efforts, nor has any hint of scandal ever come to light in subsequent years. There was, of course, also a cost in lives. According to hospital records, 5,609 lives were lost from disease and accidents during the American construction era. Adding the deaths during the French era would likely bring the total deaths to some 25,000 based on an estimate by Gorgas. However, the true number will never be known, since the French only recorded the deaths that occurred in hospital. By July 1, 1914, a total of 238,845,587 cubic yards had been excavated during the American construction era. Together with some 30,000,000 cubic yards excavated by the French, this gives a total of around 268,000,000 cubic yards, or more than four times the volume originally estimated for de Lesseps sea level canal. Roosevelt is widely given credit for building the Panama Canal, and he likely never disputed the claim.

However, of the three presidents whose terms coincided with Canal construction  Roosevelt, Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson  it was Taft who provided the most active, hands-on participation over the longest period. Taft visited Panama five times as Roosevelts Secretary of War and made two more trips while President. He also hired John Stevens and, when Stevens resigned, recommended Goethals. When Taft replaced Roosevelt in the White House in 1909, canal construction was only at the halfway mark. Goethals, however, was to write, The real builder of the Panama Canal was Theodore Roosevelt. The following words of Theodore Roosevelt are engraved in a plaque on display in the Rotunda of the Administration Building, and more than anything else convey his personal philosophy and the spirit of his thinking about the achievement at Panama: "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." David McCullough in his book "The Path Between the Seas," wrote: "The creation of a water passage across Panama was one of the supreme human achievements of all time, the culmination of a heroic dream of over four hundred years and of more than twenty years of phenomenal effort and sacrifice. The fifty miles between the oceans were among the hardest ever won by human effort and ingenuity, and no statistics on tonnage or tolls can begin to convey the grandeur of what was accomplished. Primarily the canal is an expression of that old and noble desire to bridge the divide, to bring people together.

It is a work of civilization." An expanded Panama Canal opens for giant ships - The Washington Post An expanded Panama Canal opens for giant ships The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost. Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set! By Steven Mufson By Steven Mufson June 26, 2016 Follow @StevenMufson PANAMA CITY — A mammoth ship bearing 9,472 containers and the unwieldy name Cosco Shipping Panama completed on Sunday the first official voyage through the new expanded Panama Canal, a $5.25 billion project designed to modernize a 102-year-old landmark of human ambition, determination and engineering prowess. The Chinese vessel, which set sail from the Greek port of Piraeus on June 11, began its crossing of the isthmus from the northern Atlantic Ocean end of the 48-mile canal.

On Sunday morning, it entered one of the new locks, on its way to the man-made Gatun Lake, the widened Culebra Cut through a verdant mountain ridge, and then the Pacific Ocean. Like the channel that opened in 1914, the enlarged Panama Canal is a feat of engineering, albeit one that ran over budget and two years behind schedule. The contractors dredged enough material to fill the Egyptian Great Pyramid at Giza, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, 25 times over. The amount of steel used could have erected 29 new Eiffel Towers. The Empire State Building could lie down and fit into just one of the three chambers in each of the new channel’s locks. Although cargo tonnage through the canal has risen 60 percent since 2009, Panama needed to expand the canal to accommodate a new generation of container ships, known as neo-Panamax, which are too big for the old canal locks. The new locks are wider than the old ones, 180 feet vs. 110 feet, and are deeper, too, at 60 feet vs. 42 feet.

Officials say the larger locks and new lane will double the waterway’s cargo capacity. More than 170 neo-Panamax ships have already booked reservations in the expanded locks. “We knew that if we did not embark on this project, the quality and span of our services ran the risk of deteriorating, impacting shippers, customers and our country alike,” the Panama Canal Authority’s chief executive, Jorge Quijano, said in a speech to customers Saturday night. “The expansion will open new trade routes.” A tugboat leads a Neopanamax cargo ship as it approaches the new Agua Clara locks near the port city of Colon, Panama. (Moises Castillo/AP) Export facilities are being built to send abundant U.S. shale gas to foreign markets, many of them in Asia, where China’s fast growth and Japan’s idle nuclear plants have created demand. A tanker of liquefied natural gas loaded on the U.S. Gulf Coast and bound for Asian markets could shorten its travel distance by about 5,000 nautical miles and seven to nine days, according to Martin Houston, co-founder of Tellurian, a developer of liquefied natural gas projects.

He estimated that the expanded canal could accommodate about 80 percent of the current world liquefied natural gas tanker fleet, compared with the 7 percent that could pass through the old facilities. “All this adds up to additional commercial flexibility and lower cost, which is what our customers want,” he said. The Boston Consulting Group and C.H. Robinson, a transportation logistics company, estimated last year that as much as 10 percent of the container traffic from East Asia to the United States could shift to East Coast ports instead of landing on the West Coast and finishing the journey by truck or rail. That, they said, would be rerouting volume “equivalent to building a new port roughly double the size of the ports in Savannah and Charleston.” This prospect has triggered activity up and down the East Coast. After delays, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey now says that a $1.3 billion project to raise the 85-year-old Bayonne Bridge will enable ships to pass under by late 2017. The South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA) is planning to dredge Charleston’s 45-foot-deep harbor to a depth of 52 feet by the end of the decade.

“The old Panama Canal was an impediment to deploying ships to the East Coast of the United States from Asia,” said SCPA chief executive James I. Newsome III. Newsome gave the example of cargo bound for Charlotte from Asia. If it landed in Los Angeles, it would cost $2,000 to send it across the country by rail. If it landed in Charleston, it would cost only $600 to send it the rest of the way by truck. Even if it took a little more time, he said, “supply chain is more about reliability than transit time.” Panama's Canal Authority declared the June 10 test of its new locks a success before the inauguration of the expanded canal. The ambitious $5.2 billion expansion of the Panama Canal makes it more competitive for larger cargo ships with a new lane to double the capacity. (Reuters) For Panama, the new canal is giving a boost to the economy by attracting new investment and jobs in the service sector. The government, as owner of the canal authority, receives dividends equal to 2.1 percent of gross domestic product. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that Panama will continue to grow at its current rate of nearly 6 percent a year.

Iván Zarak, deputy vice minister of the economy, said foreign direct investment has nearly tripled since 2009. And he boasted that Panama has done that without oil and without any single sector accounting for more than 20 percent of the economy. The canal is just part of a formidable infrastructure spending program here. Panama is adding a second metro line at a cost of $2 billion and is planning a third. It built a new bridge over the canal that will have six lanes for cars and two for a metro monorail. It is doubling the size of its airport. It is exploring a port for its Pacific coast. It is adding a third electric transmission line. And it is sinking $450 million into urban renewal of poor sections of Colon on the north side of the canal. Nevertheless, the canal project did not go off without hitches. The European consortium expanding the waterway demanded more money as costs soared, but arbitration went largely in favor of Panama’s canal authority. Visible leaks in the cement walls at the locks also prompted major repairs. “We knew from the beginning that it was going to be a difficult project,” Zarak said.

“When you build a house, you have problems.” Others worry about the ability of the nearly 300 canal pilots to safely guide the new giant ships through the snug locks and channels. The height of the bigger container ships — capable of carrying 14,000 containers, more than double previous maximums — could leave them susceptible to wind gusts. Underwater currents can vary with the size of a ship. Since there is no other canal like it, safety experts recreated the canal at a scale of 1 to 25, with miniature ships. In a small pond and channel dug at a cost of $8 million, pilots ride in motorboat-size barges fabricated in France, nudged by tugboats small enough to fit into a shopping cart. “To handle a small ship is more of a challenge,” said Capt. Fernando Jaen, a Panama Canal pilot trainer. Even so, the canal authority did a practice run before the official opening. On June 11, the bulk carrier Baroque eased through the new lock on the Atlantic side. The expansion of the canal has also strained supplies of fresh water, which the canal needs to run the locks.

Gatun Lake provides water to the canal and drinking water to much of the country. The canal builders came up with an elegant, though partial, solution. They built three water basins that exchange water with the locks, thus reusing up to 60 percent of the water in the new locks. But the locks are still an added load. Then there is the matter of the Chinese. A Chinese billionaire, Wang Jing, who made money in financial consulting and telecommunications, has proposed carving a canal through Nicaragua. He’s hardly the first. People have been toying with similar plans for at least 200 years. The cost of that project has been estimated as high as $50 billion. And while that might not be a wise investment, it would create stiff and nearby competition for Panama. The Panama Canal occupies a special place in the American imagination. President Ulysses S. Grant sent a 100-person scouting party, which recommended against it. A 20-year French effort, led by the engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, was abandoned after thousands of workers were stricken with yellow fever, malaria and dysentery. President Theodore Roosevelt launched construction again, and the canal opened Aug.

15, 1914. The United States took control of the canal zone, 10 miles wide. In a 1977 treaty signed by President Carter, the United States turned over sovereignty to Panama under a long-term lease that ended in 1999. Panama is now hoping to give the canal another lease on life. Read more Theodore Roosevelt and the Panama Canal . TR, The Story of Theodore Roosevelt . WGBH American Experience | PBS Other General Articles On February 1, 1881, driven by patriotic fervor and capitalized by over 100,000 mostly small investors, the French Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique began work on a canal that would cross the Colombian isthmus of Panama and unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, led the project. His plan called for a sea-level canal to be dug along the path of the Panama Railroad. Some 50 miles in length, the canal would be less than half as long as the Suez.

De Lesseps estimated that the job would cost about $132 million, and take 12 years to complete. Europeans had dreamed of a Central American canal as early as the 16th century; President Ulysses S. Grant sent seven expeditions to study the feasibility of such a work. As travel and trade in the Western hemisphere increased, the need for a canal grew increasingly more obvious. To sail from Atlantic to Pacific, ships navigated around Cape Horn, the treacherous southern extremity of South America. A New York to San Francisco journey measured some 13,000 miles and took months. Watch Travel the Panama Canal on PBS. See more from American Experience. A canal across Panama would save incalculable miles and man-hours. It would also, Ferdinand de Lesseps believed, make its stockholders rich, just as the Suez had done for its investors. Ample evidence supported de Lesseps' claims; the tiny cross-Panama railway had made in excess of $7 million in the first six years of operation. That construction of the railroad had cost upwards of 6,000 lives failed to dampen de Lesseps' enthusiasm.

The French hacked a broad pathway through the jungle from coast to coast, and on January 20, 1882, commenced digging. They commanded an impressive array of modern equipment, from steam shovels and locomotives to tugboats and dredges. Their work crew consisted mostly of local black and Indian laborers . In the first months, the digging progressed slowly but steadily. Then the rains began. De Lesseps, who visited Panama once-during the dry season-had disregarded the warnings of men who knew Panama intimately. Now his crew discovered the real Panama-mile upon mile of impassable jungle, day upon day of torrential rain, insects, snakes, swamps, hellish heat, smallpox, malaria, yellow fever -and the Chagres River. The Chagres snaked across the canal route a total of 14 times. Ignoring the warnings of engineers who deemed the task impossible, de Lesseps' decided to dam and divert the river, which he had only seen at low ebb. In the rainy season, the Chagres rose to a monstrous, churning torrent that swept away anything that stood in its way. It was distinctly inhospitable to taming.

Chest deep in mud, the French force dug onward. Time and time again, the rain and the Chagres destroyed what engineering and hard labor had wrought. Mudslides buried men, supplies, and machines. And from the freshwater pools that lay everywhere, a deadly plague of insects rose. In 1881, the French recorded about 60 deaths from disease. In 1882, the number doubled. The following year, 420 died. Malaria and yellow fever were the most common killers. Because the company often fired sick men to reduce medical costs, the numbers probably reflect low estimates. Believing the fumes from rotting vegetation caused the disease, doctors at the French hospital at Ancon advised workers to avoid the night air. Only after thousands of deaths would the cause be attributed to virus-carrying mosquitoes. Three out of four men hospitalized at Ancon died, despite the massive investments that made the hospital among the finest in the tropical world. In no small manner was this hastened by the architecture of the hospital gardens. To protect the potted plants from attack by ants, gardeners had set the pots in pottery bowls filled with water.

Disease-carrying mosquitoes multiplied in these reservoirs by the million and carried their deadly cargo through the screenless windows of the hospital each night. Year after year, the digging-and the dying-continued. As the toll mounted, so did discontent. French investors grumbled at the lack of progress. In the page's of Harper's Weekly, American cartoonist Thomas Nast caricatured de Lesseps, wondering "Is M. de Lesseps a Canal Digger or a Grave Digger?" When the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique failed in December,1888, thousands of French investors lost their money. The word Panama quickly became synonymous with scandal and fraud. About $287 million had been spent. Fifty million cubic meters of earth and rock had been moved. Eleven miles of canal had been dug. Twenty thousand men had died. The canal remained unfinished, but the dream had not yet ended. Theodore Roosevelt would soon take up the cause. Shortly after ascending to the presidency, Roosevelt spoke of the Panama Canal in a speech to Congress .

"No single great material work which remains to be undertaken on this continent," Roosevelt said, "is as of such consequence to the American people." Roosevelt acted quickly . In 1902, the United States reached an agreement to buy rights to the French canal property and equipment for a sum not to exceed $40 million. The U.S. then began negotiating a Panama treaty with Colombia. The U.S Department of War would direct excavation. Many, both in the press and in the public, sensed a scandal, or, worse yet, good money thrown after bad. In the New York Journal, William Randolph Hearst opined that "the only way we could secure a satisfactory concession from Colombia would be to go down there, take the contending statesmen by the necks, and hold a batch of them in office long enough to get a contract in mind." Hearst's statement proved prophetic. When Colombia grew reticent in its negotiations, Roosevelt and Panamanian business interests collaborated on a revolution. The battle for Panama lasted only a few hours. Colombian soldiers in Colón were bribed $50 each to lay down their arms; the U.S.S.

Nashville cruised off the Panamanian coast in a show of support. On November 3, 1903, the nation of Panama was born. The U.S quickly assumed parental interest. Americans had written the Panamanian Constitution in advance; the wife of pro-canal lobbyist Phillipe Bunau-Varilla had sewn the country's first flag. A payment of $10 million secured a canal zone and rights to build. Bunau-Varilla, installed as Panamanian minister to the U.S., signed a treaty favorable to American interests. The $40 million given to J.P Morgan for distribution to French stockholders disappeared amid rumors of larcenous speculation. 1904, the Americans' first year in Panama, mirrored the French disaster. The chief engineer, John Findlay Wallace , neglected to organize the effort or to develop an action plan. The food was putrid, the living conditions abysmal. Political red tape put a stranglehold on appropriations. Disease struck, and three out of four Americans booked passage home. Engineer Wallace soon followed. The Americans had poured $128 million into the swamps of Panama, to damned little effect.

The arrival of Wallace's replacement, the rugged and ingenious John Stevens , marked a turn in fortunes for the beleaguered canal. Stevens had built the Great Northern Railroad across the Pacific Northwest. In rough territory from Canada to Mexico, he had proven his tenacity. And his new plan of action would ultimately save the canal. The kind of work that needed done, Steven reasoned, could only be done by a well-housed, well-fed, disease-free labor force . Stevens began work not by not digging, but by cleaning. Dr. William Gorgas, who had helped to eradicate yellow fever in Havana years before by killing the mosquitoes that carried it, directed sanitation efforts. Workers drained swamps, swept drainage ditches, paved roads and installed plumbing. They sprayed pesticides by the ton. Entire towns rose from the jungle, complete with housing, schools, churches, commissaries, and social halls. The canal's engineering also changed. After nine months of Capitol Hill lobbying, the push for a "lake and lock" canal, favored by Roosevelt, succeeded. Stevens would dam the mighty Chagres to create the vast Gatun Lake in Panama's interior.

A series of locks would raise ships from the Atlantic side to the level of the lake. The boats would cross the lake, then descend by another set of locks to the Pacific. Ironically, the plan was nearly identical to one proposed by the French engineer Godin de Lépinay in 1879, at the same meeting in which M. de Lesseps promoted his sea-level plan. Watch Panama Canal Animation on PBS. See more from American Experience. With sanitation efforts complete, Stevens began work on a scale never before witnessed. Gigantic Bucyrus steam shovels scooped tons of earth. Railroad cars ran continuously on a double track, dumping the tailings to form the Charges dam. By December 1905, yellow fever had been officially eradicated on the Isthmus. In November, 1906, Roosevelt himself visited the canal, posing at the controls of a Bucyrus shovel. It seemed that the project could not fail. Then, on February 12, 1907, a dispirited Chief Engineer Stevens resigned. Colonel George Washington Goethals, an Army engineer with experience building lock-type canals, assumed the Chief Engineer's post.

Demanding and rigidly organized, Goethals quickly picked up where Stevens left off. Nowhere were efforts more dramatic than at the Culebra Cut , where 100,000,000 cubic yards of earth and rock would have to be removed. The laborers at Culebra -- mostly English-speaking West Indian blacks who made ten cents an hour -- moved as much as 200 trainloads of spoil a day. When mudslides filled the Cut repeatedly, Goethals simply ordered it dug out again. There were accidents of all sorts, lost equipment, and deaths, but there was progress. At the Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side, workers poured enough concrete to build a wall 8' wide, 12' high, and 133 miles long. They built culverts the size of railroad tunnels to channel water from Gatun Lake into the locks. Pittsburgh's furnaces roared as more than 50 mills, foundries, and machine shops churned out the rivets, bolts, nut, girders, and other steel pieces the canal builders needed.

In May, 1913, steam shovels broke through the Culebra Cut, and the last cement was poured at the Gatun locks. The Chagres filled Gatun Lake, and engineers prepared for the canal's first trial run. It came on September 26. The tugboat Gatun traveled through the first set of locks and out onto the lake. The locks worked flawlessly. After nine years, the end was at last in sight. The Panama Canal opened officially on August 15, 1914. The world scarcely noticed. German troops were driving across Belgium toward Paris; the newspapers relegated Panama to their back pages. The greatest engineering project in the history of the world had been dwarfed by the totality of World War I.

Question: In which year was the Panama Canal opened?
Answer: 1914